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Why You Should Care About Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation

Aug5

At Click Rain, we do online marketing for all sorts of clients, which means we have to stay up-to-date not only in our field of work, but also yours. We have a few clients that do business internationally, so when Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) went into effect July 1, 2014, we knew we had to inform our clients. If you’re a business that has customers, clients, or subscribers in Canada, we’re here to give you some important information about CASL.

What is the Canada Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL)?

CASL helps protect Canadians from the effects of spam and threats to electronic commerce, while ensuring that businesses can continue to compete in the global marketplace.

What does this have to do with our business?

CASL regulations apply to you if you are sending any type of “Commercial Electronic Message” (CEM) from or to Canadian computers or devices in Canada. A CEM message is one of the following:

Email

Instant Message

SMS Text Message

If the message promotes involvement in commercial activity, advertising, promoting a product or service to a person, it is counted as a commercial electronic message.

What do we need to do?

If your business does send commercial messages, follow these guidelines for every CEM you send:

Are there any exemptions?

Rest easy, because this regulation doesn’t apply to messages sent to your own employees / co workers. There is an exemption for sending messages to other people within your own organization, and also to people at another organization where you have had direct, voluntary, two-way communication in the past. If the message does not concern the activities of the organization, or if the organizations do not have a relationship, then the requirements of the legislation apply.

There is also an exemption for people who send messages to those they have a personal or family relationship with. So, if you’re sending an email to your cousins in Canada, you’re good!

I’m sending messages for more than one company, how does that work?

If your business is sending for more than one company, you must communicate appropriately with each other. Here are a few rules:

Yes, you are allowed to share email addresses with your other companies.

If you are sending emails from other companies, you will need to identify that you received consent from the company you received their address from.

The recipient must be able to withdraw their consent from any or all companies.

Each company is obligated to notify the other company of any unsubscribe requests they receive.

What happens if we violate the regulations under CASL?

Don’t freak out quite yet, there is a three-year transition period until July 1, 2017, during which you can take steps to ensure your list stays in compliance under the law.
If you do violate any regulations you are required to pay an administrative monetary penalty. The max amount per penalty for an individual is $1 million and up to $10 million for a business, hence why we thought it was important for you to know about this new regulation!

Communication methods continue to change, but the fundamentals of customer service stay the same. We'll tell you how social media is placing a higher emphasis on brands who have a fast response time to their customers.

Imagine trying to read an email on a screen that's 38mm or 42mm height wise. That's the screen size of the new Apple Watch. We'll tell you how this ultra small screen is impacting the future of your emails.

We help companies market smarter.

Technology has the tendency to change, quickly and often. And it's our job to stay a step ahead—and to bring our clients along with us.

Staying ahead means the latest in responsive web design and mobile app development. It means that our strategists will provide continual analysis as the technological landscape shifts, and help you craft a customized digital strategy that is both robust and forward-thinking. It means that your organization will be prepared for whatever the future of technology, imminent or distant, may bring.

But even more so than that, we're able to stay ahead because we've assembled a dream team of highly experienced and dedicated web experts who love what they do. We're able to stay ahead because we're driven to do so, because we've invested ourselves in our work to our very core. When we say we eat, sleep, and breathe the web, we're not kidding.

In short, web development and analysis is more than our job—it's our vocation. It's our passion. And we're a certified partner of Google, which we think is pretty sweet.

So give us a shout. Take us for a test drive. Get to know us. And we'll help your organization create and meet its digital goals, whatever the future may bring.

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